


all prize and love

by templemarker



Category: Knight's Fee - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7153958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/pseuds/templemarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In general, folk expected a minstrel to be merry. </p>
            </blockquote>





	all prize and love

**Author's Note:**

> For riven thorn. Thank you for running this challenge; it is a pleasure and a joy.

In general, folk expected a minstrel to be merry. 

It was quite a pervasive belief, for all that those he encountered on his perpetual journey often had never met a minstrel, or, if they had, such an encounter was often in passing, usually no more than the remembrance of a song or lyric heard once through circumstance and then oft forgotten.  

Herluin had not the heart, nor honestly the stamina, to correct all those whom he encountered on the matter. Enough that he held a store of witty phrases and charming replies that would divert even the most dogged of inquirers; he had no need to correct the misapprehensions of every villager and townsman alike. It was, perhaps, a flaw of the trade: his work, or perhaps his vocation, relied upon the interest and favors of the folk around him. (Minstrelling did not generate a reliable sum, nor did it produce reliable supper.) So in turn, the fool's ramble that seemed waiting inside every Thomas, Richard, and Harold was merely a hazard of the work, one either grown accustomed to or not, lest the role be abandoned from personal irritation alone.  

Herluin had never considered himself a merry man, nor too did the monastics of his youth, who had taught him his letters, taught him to think, and taught him that a pretty phrase would move the hearts of men even as true beauty would easily overwhelm them. He knew he had disappointed no few of the Brothers by not turning his faculty for song and poem to the body of Christ, but the Abbott could see his heart wasn't in it and did not begrudge him to leave, bound to pursuing his own path.  

In his time, Herluin had seen much that made him joyful; as much or more that had cut the heartstrings from his chest. To sing, to retell a story, with the skill a true minstrel called forth, one must experience the greatest joys and the deepest tragedies; else the story is no more than a granny's hoarse words around the fire at night, or a young man's desperate, fickle love writ large.  

Love, sadness; anguish, release. Herluin knew them all, had reviewed and counted them all in his head, ready to apply to the call for a warrior's tale of devastation and bravery to the sweet, fragile eternity of a young lover's heart.  

He was a well-admired minstrel, to be sure.  

And yet: a minstrel was meant to observe. The good ones, anyway, those that survived the picaresqueties of mad lords and bored lordling wives. One should partake in life, of course; one must learn how to feel, as deeply as one can. But a minstrel is no courtier, pushing for a spot at the table; nor is he of consequence, when the political (or romantic) tides turned martial, ripe for bloody change. A minstrel is removed.  

So Herluin believed himself to be. Oh, he involved himself when it was meaningless and inconsequential to do so; for the amusement of himself, or others, as the occasion warranted. To intervene? La, no. Such is not the work for a man with a harp to his back, worn leather on his feet and no guarantee of welcome, shelter, or sustenance three months hence.

And then Hugh Goch, damn the man, his eyes and his heart to Hell! An unpleasant man, cruel in an obvious way, no true friend to kin or acquaintances either. Herluin had seen in the boy his fate, and his future all in one prescient moment, and without true thought or measure, he wagered the boy's life against a whim and the pleasing thought of both vexing and fooling a foolish man.  

Younger, Herluin would have cursed himself for his bravado and his sharp tongue. Older (though hardly aged), Herluin took his leave with the feral child, sighing wryly at his own hubris. The boy was not, in fact, a dog. Who was Herluin to take on the burden of another's life? Not letting on his own thoughts, he led the child, fearful and shaking, to the rushes before the fire, covering him in a patched wool-cloth that would almost certainly need to be burned, and assuring him that he would be unmolested and safe (for all that a minstrel could make a boy safe in this world) in Herluin's watch.  

Ah, what a fool he himself was, for he grew attached to this young boy, dog-boy, dogs-body, or none. He had not expected much, nor anything really. He'd given the briefest of thoughts to the boy--Randal's--well-being, and yet, he was a lovely little thing. Cleaned, of course, his hair shorn close to chase off the fleas and lice, a worn but serviceable sark billowing about his too-thin body.  

Herluin watched him change from a fearful, beaten thing to a young man who somehow had the temerity to _think_ , for himself no less. And Herluin felt himself be moved.  

It was a strange thing, to be changed by another. It mattered not whether it was a mother, a lover, or God--or a child too young and ill-bred to know how poorly Herluin was suited to care for him. Herluin found himself changing, choosing to check on the boy, ask Randal about his day. Make certain he'd eaten more than kitchen scraps, bringing bread and stew only to watch Randal fly through it like the half-starved boy-child he was. More than anything, he was surprised by how much Randal wanted to _know_ things, things about the world but also things about Herluin. Herluin found himself talking more about his past, his life, in his months with Randal than ever at any length before.  

Herluin knew he was growing attached, just as he knew Randal could not--would not--stay with him for very long at all. Setting aside Herluin's own path, uncertain at best and deeply unstable at least, Randal was no fit for the road, for a lord's court or a war tent.  

He knew Randal would follow him, willingly; Randal would chose to do so, out of care and misguided loyalty. Herluin knew that Randal must leave him before the question ever arose.  

Sir Everard owed him no favors, but enjoyed Herluin's stories: including those exploits that were Herluin's own. He had no love for Hugh Goch, would be pleased and amused by the circumstances of Randal's acquisition. But most importantly, Everard had held on to his measure of land, cared for it, had plans to pass it down the line to the young grandson of his. There Randal could stay, in one place, given a chance to survive on more than just whim and circumstance.  

Herluin began to plan for it, once he was sure in his mind it was the right thing to do. Randal, who had gone to engage with the hounds again--for all that had happened, he loved the beasts as his own--would surely come to understand it in time, or at least become content with a roof over his head and food to spare.  

It was the right thing to do. Herluin, with the ease of long practice, took his own feelings, shook himself free of them, and sang that night of loss and grief, a mother's lament and a widower's cry. He felt Randal's eye on him, guileless, and young, and put the wrench of his heart into the rising pitch of the song, fingers plucking chords as though they were his own heart's strings. 

**Author's Note:**

>  _But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving._  
>  ― Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son


End file.
